The seafood pot is a device used by fishermen to capture crabs, lobsters, eels and similar creatures from the tidal and coastal waters in which they dwell. The construction of seafood pots has evolved over the years, and variation is still found in their design and size. However, the typical seafood pot of today utilizes a frame made from steel rods welded into a box-like configuration, which is enclosed on all sides with wire mesh netting. The wire mesh netting will usually be secured to the steel rods of the frame by metallic rings, and will have mesh openings measuring about an inch or more in diameter. One or more walls of the seafood trap will have an opening formed therein through which the creatures to be trapped can enter, the periphery of the opening being fitted with a wire mesh tapered collar extending into the trap and which prevents the lobster, crab or the like from leaving through the opening once it has entered. Finally, the trap will also usually have a cage formed therein to hold bait, the bait cage also being formed of wire mesh netting.
In use, such a seafood trap is lowered into the fishing waters and is left for long periods of time. The weight of the steel frame is usually sufficient to hold it submerged, but sometimes auxiliary weights are employed. Typically, the fisherman will place his traps one day and will return to raise, empty, rebait and replace them in the water one or several days later. A typical trap will thus effectively remain in the water for many months. Obviously, this immersion of a steel rod and wire mesh netting seafood trap in water for long periods will cause rusting, corrosion and eating away thereof over time, if no preventive measures are taken.
In order to preserve the material of a seafood trap for as long as possible while submerged in water, it has become standard practice to manufacture the trap from wire mesh netting that has been previously galvanized. Typically, the galvanized netting has been secured to an ungalvanzied frame formed of steel rods. This arrangement prolongs the life of the netting, but does not solve all the problems associated with the conventional seafood trap.
A galvanized coating tends to erode in the water, especially in sea and tide waters, where the salt content is high. Thus, over time, the zinc coating flakes away and becomes thinner, until the steel material of the netting shows through in one or more places. Once bare steel appears, rust quickly occurs, and the seafood trap will rapidly deteriorate. Further, the ungalvanized steel bar frame members will rust from the outset, and the result is that the typical seafood trap of this type will have a relatively short life, albeit a longer life than would be possible if no galvanizing were employed.
It has been recognized that the life of the galvanized components of a seafood trap can be greatly prolonged by installing a sacrificial anode thereon. Such an anode consists of a large block of zinc, having connecting wires on its opposite ends. The anode is simply connected to the galvanized wire mesh and, thereafter, the anode itself will erode before the mesh. Such anodes have been found to be effective in use, but they are also expensive.
As has been noted, it has become common to manufacture a seafood pot using wire mesh netting that has been previously galvanized. However, such netting is expensive and can be damaged during installation on its frame, so that bare steel wire may show through. If this damage should occur, then a point of weakness is created wherein rusting action can commence, causing the early death of the seafood pot. To alleviate this damaged netting problem and also to effect galvanizing of the steel frame and the rings used to secure the netting to the frame, it has been proposed to hot dip the completed pot in molten zinc.
While such hot dipping of a seafood pot has been done, it has not been an efficient operation or always successful. Among other problems, it has proved to be most difficult to properly clean mill scale, tar and the like, and other foreign matter from the surface of the components of the seafood pot before hot dipping is done, so that the resultant zinc coating has often been of rather poor quality. Such cleaning is now done with hand labor and, because of the extensive wire length found in the netting, it is difficult to do efficiently and thoroughly. As has been noted, even a single weak point in the zinc coating can prove fatal to the desired lifespan of a galvanized seafood pot and, thus, thorough cleaning before galvanizing is essential.
Because of the difficulties therewith and except for small-scale, hand-operated production activity, it has not proved feasible thus far to hot dip seafood pots after they have been manufactured. Thus, the prevailing style in the seafood industry today is still to make the seafood pot of pregalvanized wire mesh netting, and to utilize sacrificial anodes with the pot, whereby a life span of one or perhaps two seasons for the pots is obtained. This mode of operation in the seafood industry offers several problems.
First of all, the seafood pots themselves are expensive to acquire for the individual waterman who must run a string of several score pots to earn a decent living. The expense of replacing the pots every season or so, because of their deterioration from rust, other erosion, and marine life encrustations, is an added burden that reduces profits and increases the price of seafood. Further, it is a common practice of many watermen to examine deteriorated seafood pots each time they are raised from the water and, if they are too badly decayed, to simply cut them loose and let them settle to the bottom where they rust away and cause pollution problems. There is no incentive today for a fisherman to go to the trouble of loading a deteriorated seafood pot into the boat and bring it back to shore.
Finally, the common use of sacrificial anodes, while effective, is also expensive to the fisherman. For all of the reasons noted, an improvement in the cost and lifespan of seafood pots is needed and would be welcomed by the industry, by environmentalists, and by others concerned about the increasing pollution of our waters. The present invention offers a most significant improvement in this direction.